December 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Antisocial] Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist
by Major Variola (ret) 19 Dec '04

19 Dec '04

At 06:12 AM 12/19/04 +0100, Anonymous wrote: >Major Variola typed: > >> PS: heard some fedscum mention 'militia and other terrorists' the other >> day, what would Gen George W think? > >which fedscum, do you have a mentionable source, &c.? I haven't found the source, I recall that I heard it. Might have been a quickie comment on eg the Crystal Cathedral shooter. (Their depressed music conductor who alas didn't take Schuller out.) >reminds of the Reno quote, "They have computers and... other weapons of mass >destruction." ..They have computers, they're tappin' phone lines, you know that ain't allowed..

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Identity theft isn't always online crime
by R.A. Hettinga 19 Dec '04

19 Dec '04

<http://www.indystar.com/articles/3/203066-4663-P.html> Color of Money: Michelle Singletary Identity theft isn't always online crime December 19, 2004 Although online shopping has its risks, your credit-card number and other personal information are just as likely to be stolen in a very low-tech way. To identity thieves, a crowded mall is like Chuck E. Cheese is to children -- a paradise of commotion. Criminals are just waiting for you to leave your purse unattended or open as you hustle around looking for holiday gifts. They love men who carry their wallets in easy-to-pick places. According to an American Express study, consumers have a lot to learn about protecting themselves against identity theft. While 77 percent claim they take precautions to secure their information, nearly half still make the mistake of carrying their Social Security numbers in their wallets. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed don't check to see if a Web site is secure when shopping online. Here are some tips to help you avoid being a victim of holiday identity thieves: * Write "check photo ID" in ink on the back of your credit card near your signature. This is an effective way of getting cashiers to check the credit card against your photo identification. * Michael J. Zmistowski, a financial adviser in Tampa, Fla., sent this tip to his clients: While shopping, watch out for anyone standing nearby who has a cell phone with a camera. Someone can easily take a clear picture of the data on your credit card. * Come January, you may not want to look at your credit-card statements. But you must. Open them immediately and check for unfamiliar purchases. In fact, keep all the receipts from your holiday shopping sprees in one place so you can cross- check them with your statements. * Don't be a victim of "phishing," in which crooks send e-mails that look as if they come from legitimate companies requesting certain information. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, phishing e-mails persuade up to 5 percent of recipients to respond. When they do, consumers typically provide information such as credit-card, bank and Social Security numbers or user names and passwords -- resulting in identity theft. Be suspicious of e-mail that is sent to you unsolicited. * Buy a shredder and use it, especially to destroy any store receipts with your full credit-card number. * If you shop online, make sure the site is secure. According to the Better Business Bureau, sites that have technology to secure transactions will have "https" instead of "http" in the Web address of the page that asks for credit-card information. Another indication the site is secure is an icon of a locked padlock. * If you suspect that your identity has been stolen, don't wait until after the holidays to report the crime. You need to contact your creditors and the three major credit bureaus immediately. You need to call only one credit bureau to place fraud alerts on all three of your credit reports. A fraud alert is supposed to result in creditors contacting you before opening any new accounts or making changes to your existing accounts. The Federal Trade Commission has a link on its Web site outlining steps to take if you are a victim of identity theft. Go to www.ftc.gov, and click on the link for consumers. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Militia or other Terrorists?
by Major Variola (ret) 19 Dec '04

19 Dec '04

>> PS: heard some fedscum mention 'militia and other terrorists' the other >> day, what would Gen George W think? > >which fedscum, do you have a mentionable source, &c.? It was ATF, about some gun-robbers; it seems to be a reply to trollbait by the Faux news channel or spontaneous dreck. http://www.gunmuse.com/News/Are%20they%20Terrorist%20or%20Militia Are they Terrorist or MilitiaBY GunMuse That was the question asked and answered to by Fox News to the ATF in Michigan Gun store robberies. This is a prime example of where we see our gun organizations failing to take action. Those words are not interchangeable. The Clinton administration tried to make it that way while they rewrote the constitution via executive orders, and gave away federal lands and national treasures (Like the liberty bell) to the United Nations. This is a defamation of character to interchange these words. Militias are required to by the constitution to be a citizen protection from government corruption and abuse of power on its own people. Its the very reason that the military can not be used to police US citizens for any reason. More than 300 firearms have been stolen from local dealers in a short period of time. The thieves were caught on film using a shotgun to blast open the front door running to the back display cases and grabbing as many pistols as they could carry and were gone in less than 1 minute and 15 seconds. The ATF said they already had suspects and had issued a federal search warrant in the case and then was asked the question. Are the robbers terrorist or Militia? Lumping American patriots and believers in a strong constitutional government in the same boat as those who attacked New York.

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RE: [Antisocial] Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist
by Major Variola (ret) 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

At 05:33 PM 12/17/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >"I am a patriot fighting the real traitors who are destroying our >democracy. I resent it when they call me delusional," he said. > >Tee hee hee... Indeed. The dude shows that 1. ability to inherit $$$ doesn't imply brains 2. he should take a structural engineering class 3. he might appreciate the hubris of Architects (tm) but that requires #2 If he really gave a shat he'd investigate the RDX stored in the Murrah building, next to daycare, but that was just a (.mil trained) 'Merican, not a bunch of specops Ay-rabs. JYA may be Architects (snicker) but methinks he groks structures, and even if not, his cryptome penance absolves him from the sins of the artsy. PS: heard some fedscum mention 'militia and other terrorists' the other day, what would Gen George W think? (Ans: The general would ask, why do we not guillotine the bastards?)

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A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears
by R.A. Hettinga 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/18/national/18aclu.html?ei=5006&en=1fb103f41…> The New York Times December 18, 2004 A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears By STEPHANIE STROM he American Civil Liberties Union is using sophisticated technology to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort that has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders' commitment to privacy rights. Some board members say the extensive data collection makes a mockery of the organization's frequent criticism of banks, corporations and government agencies for their practice of accumulating data on people for marketing and other purposes. Daniel S. Lowman, vice president for analytical services at Grenzebach Glier & Associates, the data firm hired by the A.C.L.U., said the software the organization is using, Prospect Explorer, combs a broad range of publicly available data to compile a file with information like an individual's wealth, holdings in public corporations, other assets and philanthropic interests. The issue has attracted the attention of the New York attorney general, who is looking into whether the group violated its promises to protect the privacy of its donors and members. "It is part of the A.C.L.U.'s mandate, part of its mission, to protect consumer privacy," said Wendy Kaminer, a writer and A.C.L.U. board member. "It goes against A.C.L.U. values to engage in data-mining on people without informing them. It's not illegal, but it is a violation of our values. It is hypocrisy." The organization has been shaken by infighting since May, when the board learned that Anthony D. Romero, its executive director, had registered the A.C.L.U. for a federal charity drive that required it to certify that it would not knowingly employ people whose names were on government terrorism watch lists. A day after The New York Times disclosed its participation in late July, the organization withdrew from the charity drive and has since filed a lawsuit with other charities to contest the watch list requirement. The group's new data collection practices were implemented without the board's approval or knowledge, and were in violation of the A.C.L.U.'s privacy policy at the time, said Michael Meyers, vice president of the organization and a frequent and strident internal critic. Mr. Meyers said he learned about the new research by accident Nov. 7 in a meeting of the committee that is organizing the group's Biennial Conference in July. He objected to the practices, and the next day, the privacy policy on the group's Web site was changed. "They took out all the language that would show that they were violating their own policy," he said. "In doing so, they sanctified their procedure while still keeping it secret." Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York appears to be asking the same questions. In a Dec. 3 letter, Mr. Spitzer's office informed the A.C.L.U. that it was conducting an inquiry into whether the group had violated its promises to protect the privacy of donors and members. Emily Whitfield, a spokeswoman for the A.C.L.U., said the organization was confident that its efforts to protect donors' and members' privacy would withstand any scrutiny. "The A.C.L.U. certainly feels that data privacy is an extremely important issue, and we will of course work closely with the state attorney general's office to answer any and all questions they may have," she said. Robert B. Remar, a member of the board and its smaller executive committee, said he did not think data collection practices had changed markedly. He recalled that the budget included more money to cultivate donors but said he did not know what specifically was being done. Mr. Remar said he did not know until this week that the organization was using an outside company to collect data or that collection had expanded from major donors to those who contribute as little as $20. "Honestly, I don't know the details of how they do it because that's not something a board member would be involved in," he said. The process is no different than using Google for research, he said, emphasizing that Grenzebach has a contractual obligation to keep information private. The information dispute is just the latest to engulf Mr. Romero. When the organization pulled out of the federal charity drive, it rejected about $500,000 in expected donations. Mr. Romero said that when he signed the enrollment certification, he did not think the A.C.L.U. would have to run potential employees' names through the watch lists to meet requirements. The board's executive committee subsequently learned that Mr. Romero had advised the Ford Foundation, his former employer, to follow the nation's main antiterrorism law, known as the Patriot Act, in composing language for its grant agreements, helping to ensure that none of its money inadvertently underwrites terrorism or other unacceptable activities. The A.C.L.U., which has vigorously contended that the act threatens civil liberties, had accepted $68,000 from Ford under the new terms by then. The board voted in October to return the money and reject further grants from Ford and the Rockefeller Foundation, which uses similar language in its grant agreements. In 2003, Mr. Romero waited several months to inform the board that he had signed an agreement with Mr. Spitzer to settle a complaint related to the security of the A.C.L.U.'s Web site. The settlement, signed in December 2002, required the agreement to be distributed to the board within 30 days, and Mr. Romero did not hand it out until June 2003. He told board members that he had not carefully read the agreement and that he did not believe it required him to distribute it, according to a chronology compiled by Ms. Kaminer. Many nonprofit organizations collect information about their donors to help their fund-raising, using technology to figure out giving patterns, net worth and other details that assist with more targeted pitches. Because of its commitment to privacy rights, however, the A.C.L.U. has avoided the most modern techniques, according to minutes of its executive committee from three years ago. "What we did then wasn't very sophisticated because of our stance on privacy rights," said Ira Glasser, Mr. Romero's predecessor. Mr. Glasser, who resigned in 2001, said the group had collected basic data on major donors and conducted a ZIP code analysis of its membership for an endowment campaign while he was there. He said it had done research on Lexis/Nexis and may have looked at S.E.C. filings. Mr. Meyers said he learned on Nov. 7 that the A.C.L.U.'s data collection practices went far beyond previous efforts. "If I give the A.C.L.U. $20, I have not given them permission to investigate my partners, who I'm married to, what they do, what my real estate holdings are, what my wealth is, and who else I give my money to," he said. On Nov. 8, the privacy statement on the A.C.L.U. Web site was replaced with an "Online Privacy Policy." Until that time, the group had pledged to gather personal information only with the permission of members and donors. It also said it would not sell or transfer information to a third party or use it for marketing. Those explicit guarantees were eliminated from the Web site after Mr. Meyers raised his concerns about the new data-mining program at the Nov. 7 meeting. After learning of Mr. Spitzer's inquiry, the executive committee of the board took up the data-mining issue on Dec. 14. Board members are allowed to listen in on any executive committee meeting, and Mr. Meyers asked the panel to participate in its conference call. The first item on the agenda was whether he could be on the line. The executive committee voted 9 to 1 to bar him and had a staff member inform him that the meeting was of the board of the A.C.L.U. Foundation, not the group's executive committee, and thus he was excluded. Mr. Remar, who has been a board member for 18 years, said board members had been asked to leave executive committee meetings during personnel discussions, but Mr. Meyers said it was a first. Mr. Remar said the data collection efforts were a function of the foundation, and thus the executive committee had met as the foundation board. But Mr. Romero convened a meeting of the executive committee, and Mr. Spitzer's letter was addressed to the A.C.L.U., with no mention of the foundation. Mr. Meyers said his exclusion raises a profound issue for other board members. "Their rationale for excluding me implicitly means that they can't share anything with the board, but the board as a whole has fiduciary responsibilities," he said. "How can board members do their duty if information is withheld from them?" -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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The end of the world: A brief history
by R.A. Hettinga 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

<http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3490697> The Economist The end of the world A brief history Dec 16th 2004 Why do end-of-time beliefs endure? A VERICHIP is a tiny, implantable microchip with a unique identification number that connects a patient to his medical records. When America's Food and Drug Administration recently approved it for medical use in humans, the news provoked familiar worries in the press about privacy-threatening technologies. But on the notice boards of raptureready.com, the talk was about a drawback that the FDA and the media seemed to have overlooked. Was the VeriChip the "mark of the beast"? Raptureready.com runs an online service for the millions of born-again Christians in America who believe that an event called the Rapture is coming soon. During the Rapture, Christ will return and whisk believers away to join the righteous dead in heaven. From there, they will have the best seats in the house as the unsaved perish in a series of spectacular fires, wars, plagues and earthquakes. (Raptureready.com advises the soon-to-depart to stick a note on the fridge to brief those left behind-husbands, wives and in-laws-about the horrors in store for them.) Furnished with apocalyptic tracts from the Bible, believers scour news dispatches for clues that the Rapture is approaching. Some think implantable chips are a sign. The Book of Revelation features a "mark" that the Antichrist makes everybody wear "in their right hand, or in their foreheads". Rapturists have more than a hobbyist's idle interest in identifying this mark. Anyone who accepts it spends eternity roasting in the sulphurs of hell. (And, incidentally, the European Union may be "the matrix out of which the Antichrist's kingdom could grow.") Christians have kept faith with the idea that the world is just about to end since the beginnings of their religion. Jesus Himself hinted more than once that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of His followers. In its original form, the Lord's Prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples, may have implored God to "keep us from the ordeal". Men have been making the same appeal ever since. In 156AD, a fellow called Montanus, pronouncing himself to be the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, declared that the New Jerusalem was about to come crashing down from the heavens and land in Phrygia-which, conveniently, was where he lived. Before long, Asia Minor, Rome, Africa and Gaul were jammed with wandering ecstatics, bitterly repenting their sins and fasting and whipping themselves in hungry anticipation of the world's end. A bit more than a thousand years later, the authorities in Germany were stamping out an outbreak of apocalyptic mayhem among a self-abusing sect called the secret flagellants of Thuringia. The disciples of William Miller, a 19th-century evangelical American, clung ecstatically to the same belief as the Montanists and the Thuringians. A thick strand of Christian history connects them all, and countless other movements. Don't get left behind Apocalyptic belief renews itself in ingenious ways. Belief in the Rapture, which enlivens the familiar end-of-time narrative with a compellingly dramatic twist, appears to be a modern phenomenon: John Nelson Darby, a 19th-century British evangelical preacher, was perhaps the first to popularise the idea. (Darby's inspiration was a passage in St Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, which talks about the Christian dead and true believers being "caught up together" in the clouds.) It is not easy to say how many Americans believe in Darby's concept of Rapture. But a dozen novels that dramatise the event and its gripping aftermath-the "Left Behind" series-have sold more than 40m copies. New apocalyptic creeds have even sprung from those sticky moments when the world has failed to end on schedule. (Social scientists call this "disconfirmation".) When the resurrected Christ failed to show up for Miller's disciples on the night of October 22nd 1844, press scribblers mocked the "Great Disappointment" mercilessly. But even as they jeered, a farmer called Hiram Edson snuck away from the vigil to pray in a barn, where he duly received word of what had happened. There had been a great event after all-but in heaven, not on Earth. This happening was that Jesus had begun an "investigative judgment of the dead" in preparation for his return. Thus was born the Church of Seventh-day Adventists. They were not the only ones to rise above apparent setbacks to the prophesies by which they set such store: the Jehovah's Witnesses of the persistently apocalyptic Watchtower sect survived no fewer than nine disconfirmations every few years between 1874 and 1975. Which way to Armageddon? Why do end-of-time beliefs endure? Social scientists love to set about this question with earnest study of the people who subscribe to such ideas. As part of his investigation into the "apocalyptic genre" in modern America, Paul Boyer of the University of Wisconsin asks why so many of his fellow Americans are "susceptible" to televangelists and other "popularisers". >From time to time, sophisticated Americans indulge the thrillingly terrifying thought that nutty, apocalyptic, born-again Texans are guiding not just conservative social policies at home, but America's agenda in the Middle East as well, as they round up reluctant compatriots for the last battle at Armageddon. (It's a bit south of the Lake of Galilee in the plain of Jezreel.) Behind these attitudes sits the assumption that apocalyptic thought belongs-or had better belong-to the extremities of human experience. On closer inspection, though, that is by no means true. Properly, the apocalypse is both an end and a new beginning. In Christian tradition, the world is created perfect. There is then a fall, followed by a long, rather enjoyable (for some) period of moral degeneration. This culminates in a decisive final battle between good (the returned Christ) and evil (the Antichrist). Good wins and establishes the New Jerusalem and with it the 1,000-year reign of King Jesus on Earth. This is the glorious millennium that millenarians await so eagerly. Millenarians tend to place history at a moment just before the decisive final showdown. The apocalyptic mind looks through the surface reality of the world and sees history's epic, true nature: "apocalypse" comes from the Greek word meaning to uncover, or disclose. Norman Cohn, a British historian, places the origin of apocalyptic thought with Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), a Persian prophet who probably lived between 1500 and 1200BC. The Vedic Indians, ancient Egyptians and some earlier civilisations had seen history as a cycle, which was for ever returning to its beginning. Zoroaster embellished this tepid plot. He added goodies (Ahura Mazda, the maker and guardian of the ordered world), baddies (the spirit of destruction, Angra Mainyu) and a happy ending (a glorious consummation of order over disorder, known as the "making wonderful", in which "all things would be made perfect, once and for all"). In due course Zoroaster's theatrical talents came to Christians via the Jews. This basic drama shapes all apocalyptic thought, from the tenets of tribal cargo cults to the beliefs of UFO sects. In 1973, Claude Vorilhon, a correspondent for a French racing-car magazine, claimed to have been whisked away in a flying saucer, in which he had spent six days with a green chap who spoke fluent French. The alien told Mr Vorilhon that the Frenchman's real name was Rael, that humans had misread the Bible and that, properly translated, the Hebrew word Elohim (singular: Eloha) did not mean God, as Jews had long supposed, but "those who came from the sky". The alien then revealed that his species had created everything on Earth in a space laboratory, and that the aliens wanted to return to give humans their advanced technology, which would transform the world utterly. First, however, Rael needed financial contributions to build the aliens an embassy in Jerusalem, because otherwise they would not feel welcome (a bit lame, this explanation). Although the Israeli government has not yet given its consent, the Raelians-those persuaded by Rael's account-continue to welcome donations in anticipation of a change of heart. The Raelians' claim to be atheists who belong to the secular world must come as no surprise to Mr Cohn, who has long detected patterns of religious apocalyptic thought in what is supposedly rational, secular belief. He has traced "egalitarian and communistic fantasies" to the ancient-world idea of an ideal state of nature, in which all men are genuinely equal and none is persecuted. As Mr Cohn has put it, "The old religious idiom has been replaced by a secular one, and this tends to obscure what otherwise would be obvious. For it is the simple truth that, stripped of their original supernatural sanction, revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still." Nicholas Campion, a British historian and astrologer, has expanded on Mr Cohn's ideas. In his book, "The Great Year", Mr Campion draws parallels between the "scientific" historical materialism of Marx and the religious apocalyptic experience. Thus primitive communism is the Garden of Eden, the emergence of private property and the class system is the fall, the final gasps of capitalism are the last days, the proletariat are the chosen people and the socialist revolution is the second coming and the New Jerusalem. Hegel saw history as an evolution of ideas that would culminate in the ideal liberal-democratic state. Since liberal democracy satisfies the basic need for recognition that animates political struggle, thought Hegel, its advent heralds a sort of end of history-another suspiciously apocalyptic claim. More recently, Francis Fukuyama has echoed Hegel's theme. Mr Fukuyama began his book, "The End of History", with a claim that the world had arrived at "the gates of the Promised Land of liberal democracy". Mr Fukuyama's pulpit oratory suited the spirit of the 1990s, with its transformative "new economy" and free-world triumphs. In the disorientating disconfirmation of September 11th and the coincident stockmarket collapse, however, his religion has lost favour. The apocalyptic narrative may have helped to start the motor of capitalism. A drama in which the end returns interminably to the beginning leaves little room for the sense of progress which, according to the 19th-century social theories of Max Weber, provides the religious licence for material self-improvement. Without the last days, in other words, the world might never have had 65-inch flat-screen televisions. For that matter, the whole American project has more than a touch of the apocalypse about it. The Pilgrim Fathers thought they had reached the New Israel. The "manifest destiny" of America to spread its providential liberty and self-government throughout the North American continent (not to mention the Middle East) smacks of the millennium and the New Jerusalem. Science treasures its own apocalypses. The modern environmental movement appears to have borrowed only half of the apocalyptic narrative. There is a Garden of Eden (unspoilt nature), a fall (economic development), the usual moral degeneracy (it's all man's fault) and the pressing sense that the world is enjoying its final days (time is running out: please donate now!). So far, however, the green lobby does not appear to have realised it is missing the standard happy ending. Perhaps, until it does, environmentalism is destined to remain in the political margins. Everyone needs redemption. Watch this spacesuit Noting an exponential acceleration in the pace of technological change, futurologists like Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil think the world inhabits the "knee of the curve"-a sort of last-days set of circumstances in which, in the near future, the pace of technological change runs quickly away towards an infinite "singularity" as intelligent machines learn to build themselves. From this point, thinks Mr Moravec, transformative "mind fire" will spread in a flash across the cosmos. Britain's astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, relegates Mr Kurzweil and those like him to the "visionary fringe". But Mr Rees's own darkly apocalyptic book, "Our Final Hour", outdoes the most colourful of America's televangelists in earthquakes, plagues and other sorts of fire and brimstone. So there you have it. The apocalypse is the locomotive of capitalism, the inspiration for revolutionary socialism, the bedrock of America's manifest destiny and the undeclared religion of all those pseudo-rationalists who, like The Economist, champion the progress of liberal democracy. Perhaps, deep down, there is something inside everyone which yearns for the New Jerusalem, a place where, as a beautiful bit of Revelation puts it: God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away. Yes, perhaps. But, to be sure, not everyone agrees that salvation, when it comes, will appear clothed in a shiny silver spacesuit. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Is There Censorship?
by R.A. Hettinga 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/books/review/19DONADIO.html?8bu=&pagewant…> The New York Times December 19, 2004 ESSAY Is There Censorship? By RACHEL DONADIO In accepting a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation at a black-tie gala in Manhattan last month, Judy Blume, the doyenne of young-adult fiction, delivered herself of the following admonition: ''Your favorite teacher -- the one who made literature come alive for you, the one who helped you find exactly the book you needed when you were curious, or hurting, the one who was there to listen to you when you felt alone -- could become the next target.'' A target, that is, of censorship. Blume's books, which address sexuality and religion with a frankness that has made many a grown-up squeamish, have been among the books most frequently banned from public school libraries over the years, and so the author certainly knows whereof she speaks. Yet there was something slightly alarmist in Blume's remarks. In somber, insistent tones, she spoke as if the authorities were lurking behind the doors of the Marriott Marquis ballroom ready to burst in at any moment and break up the party. Blume's speech perfectly captured the mood in certain literary circles these days, where air once thick with now banned cigarette smoke instead hangs heavy with talk of the C-word. But the kind of censorship Blume has faced concerns individual libraries choosing not to lend her books, or placing restrictions on who can borrow them. It isn't about government harassment, even though that's what Blume seemed to be implying. The definition of censorship has loosened so much that the word has become nearly devoid of meaning. Long gone are the days when the government banned racy books like D. H. Lawrence's ''Lady Chatterley's Lover,'' Henry Miller's ''Tropic of Cancer'' or James Joyce's ''Ulysses.'' When it comes to the written word, censorship debates are no longer about taste and decency -- although those issues are much in the news concerning the visual arts, television and radio. Instead, the debate over books tends to center on geopolitics, national security and foreign policy. Today, most defenders of the written word are focusing their energies on opposing certain sections of the USA Patriot Act, chief among them Section 215, which states that federal investigators can review library and bookstore records under certain circumstances in terrorism investigations. Larry Siems, the director of international programs at the PEN American Center, strikes an oft-heard chorus when he denounces ''the growing use of government surveillance and government intrusion into your creative space.'' This, in turn, feeds a concern ''that the government is able to see more deeply into our intellectual lives,'' Siems says. Where there is smoke, there may very well be fire, but there may also be mirrors. It's often hard to draw the line between perception and practice, between how certain government regulations are viewed and how they're actually being enforced. The very mention of the Patriot Act is enough to drive many publishers, writers, librarians, bookstore owners, readers and concerned citizens into a near-paranoid frenzy at the idea that the government is intruding into their personal business, although few can cite specific instances in which that is the case. Indeed, the marketing department of any given publishing house probably has far more power over free expression in America than any government office; if it decides a smart book won't sell, the publisher may not sign it. Attitudes are rampant, but facts are harder to find. And ultimately, grandstanding and self-righteousness obscure the fact that some cases do approach government censorship. Consider two recent lawsuits. This fall, a group of publishers and Shirin Ebadi, a lawyer and leading women's rights advocate in Iran who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, filed two separate lawsuits against the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, which places serious restrictions on importing written work by authors in Iran, Sudan, Cuba and other countries under United States trade embargo. Under these regulations, buying the rights to unwritten books or making significant editorial changes to written works without a license is considered ''providing a service,'' and therefore akin to trading with the enemy, something punishable with jail time and fines of up to $1 million. Publishers argue that this regulation violates the First Amendment. OFAC devotes most of its resources to investigating terrorist financing and narcotics trafficking, and the regulations are largely intended for those aims. Some of the regulations at issue have been on the books for decades -- the Trading With the Enemy Act dates to 1917 -- and since the 80's amendments have been added to exempt ''informational materials'' from being subject to sanctions. But the current fuss dates back to this spring, when the Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a particularly stiff response to a query from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, which wanted to publish papers by scientists from countries under embargo. The Treasury office ruled that the institute could edit a manuscript from a country under embargo, and engage in peer review, but that making any ''substantive or artistic alterations or enhancements of the manuscript'' would be illegal without a license. Likewise, no publisher could market a book and no literary agent could sign an author from an embargoed country without a license. This sent the publishers through the roof. In September, Arcade, an independent publisher; the international writers' organization PEN; the Association of American University Presses; and a division of the Association of American Publishers filed suit against the foreign assets office. ''I think that censorship is the biggest danger that could confront this country, aside from physical attack,'' Richard Seaver, the editor in chief of Arcade Publishing, said in a recent interview in his comfortably cluttered Manhattan office. ''Censorship is never dead. It can always rear its ugly head. The danger is greater today than in the past 30 years.'' A month later, Ebadi -- the Iranian human rights lawyer (and Iran's first Nobelist), who under the rules can't sell her memoir to an American publisher -- filed her own suit, along with the Strothman Agency of Boston, which can't officially represent her. Ebadi raised the censorship question in an Op-Ed article in The Times last month (which she could publish because newspapers are exempt from some of the regulations). ''If even people like me -- those who advocate peace and dialogue -- are denied the right to publish their books in the United States with the assistance of Americans, then people will seriously question the view of the United States as a country that advocates democracy and freedom everywhere,'' she wrote. ''What is the difference between the censorship in Iran and this censorship in the United States? Is it not better to encourage a dialogue between Iranians and the American public?'' Salman Rushdie, the president of the board of trustees of the PEN American Center and an old hand at such debates, wrote in a declaration as part of the suit: ''Writers in Iran, Cuba and Sudan cannot publish freely in their own countries. It is a tragic and dangerous irony that Americans may not freely publish the works of those writers here, either.'' Publishers say several books have been suspended or canceled pending the ruling, including ''City of Columns: Historic Architecture of Havana'' by Alejo Carpentier (Smithsonian Institution Press), ''The Encyclopedia of Cuban Music'' (Temple University Press) and a paper by geologists at Shiraz University in Iran for an issue of the journal Mathematical Geology. ''Even if there isn't a single case where they actually prosecuted, there's a famous chilling effect,'' says Leon Friedman, a lawyer for PEN and Arcade who helped bring the lawsuit. ''Publishers just won't take a chance.'' Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, declined to comment on the lawsuits. She says that over the years, no more than a dozen license applications have been submitted, most of them since last year, and none have been denied, although some are still pending. She says the department encourages publishers to approach them with queries. So why don't the publishers simply apply for a license? Just ask any self-respecting publisher. ''I'm not going to ask permission,'' Seaver says. ''That's the Iranian way of doing things.'' He says Arcade is going full speed ahead with ''Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature,'' which is due out in April. He acknowledges that the lawsuit might help draw attention to the book. ''I think libraries will be more attentive because they will have to be. Booksellers, too.'' You can't help getting the sense that there is a certain amount of public relations going on here. Ebadi could conceivably have sold the rights to her memoirs in Britain, and the British publisher could have subsequently sold the American rights. But that wasn't the point. ''American readers deserve to be hearing directly from someone like Ebadi,'' says Wendy Strothman, the literary agent and former publishing executive who is informally representing Ebadi. Strothman says Ebadi might well have been able to get a license ''because of her stature as a Nobel laureate,'' but the lawsuit was ''a matter of principle.'' It's also not entirely clear whether the Treasury Department would allow an American publisher to import such a work from Britain. ''There are so many weighing factors,'' Millerwise says. Ebadi hasn't yet written her memoir. In her statement to the court, which reads a little like a book proposal, Ebadi says her book would discuss ''how I became a lawyer, a judge and a law professor despite the obvious and often official obstacles women in Iran have had to face.'' There certainly does seem to be a market for Iranian women's memoirs. Both lawsuits cite the success of Azar Nafisi's best-selling ''Reading Lolita in Tehran,'' about a group of women who met weekly in secret to read forbidden works of Western literature, and of ''Persepolis,'' Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian revolution. Nafisi emigrated to Washington in 1997, and Satrapi now lives in France; neither could have published her book in Iran. For her part, Nafisi says she finds the Treasury Department regulations ''mind-boggling,'' and has written a letter to the court supporting Ebadi's suit. ''I understand sometimes there might be sanctions,'' Nafisi says. ''The point about this law is the people it will hurt are the people who have been suppressed in that country anyway.'' She continues: ''The principle of publishing should be understanding, should be more knowledge. On principle I think you have to publish even Ayatollah Khomeni!'' Although the Treasury rules have been on the books for ages, the lawsuits play into the literary world's general dislike of the Bush administration. When the regulations ''reached international ears, it was a very clear example to the international community of a kind of American cultural closed-mindedness,'' Larry Siems of PEN says. ''I spent a lot of time explaining to my international colleagues that this was not this administration's doing.'' Both lawsuits may very well be settled in the coming months. In November the Treasury Department asked for a one-month extension so it could file its response to the suits in January. ''The reason for the requested extension is that the parties anticipate that there may be developments with a possibly significant effect on the posture of the case, such that the briefing may need to be refocused or may even prove unnecessary,'' the Treasury Department's attorney wrote to the judge, according to a copy of the letter provided by the Strothman Agency's lawyer. The group of publishers received a similar letter, one of its lawyers said. Both sets of plaintiffs agreed to the extension. It remains to be seen whether the Treasury Department will adjust its regulations or rule only on those specific cases. Meanwhile, these lawsuits have provided many in the literary and publishing world with a cause -- one that's far more concrete than nebulous fears about the Bush administration or the Patriot Act. And it's certainly more satisfying to focus on censorship than on the future of publishing. It also seems to get the creative juices flowing. ''There's always a clash, an underlying tension, between politics, which is basically trying to keep the status quo, and literature, which is constantly questioning the status quo,'' Nafisi says. ''This tension between politics and culture is healthy. Each of us are playing our roles.'' You might say that all this conflict about infringements -- both real and perceived -- on free expression bodes well for free expression. Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Flaw with lava lamp entropy source
by Major Variola (ret) 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

I've been running a 1970s-era lava lamp for some time, and found that it can enter a stable attractor where you get a non-circulating blob o' wax at the bottom. While Walker et al.'s (?) LL video entropy source is cute/clever, the general lesson we can take from this is to be careful that physical sources do not fail. Cooling the lamp and restarting it seems to have put it back into a quasi-random physical trajectory. I suppose my visual observation counts as an online entropic monitor that any physical source apparently should have. This was driven by a 40 watt bulb and the ambient temperature dropped when it stabilized. Shaking did not restart it; only cooling and then reheating did. Now back to your regularly scheduled war crimes.

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New revollutionaary peenjs enlaargment tool! solicit
by Andy Cummings 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

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Israeli Airport Security Questioning Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2004
by R.A. Hettinga 18 Dec '04

18 Dec '04

At 11:41 PM -0600 12/14/04, Bruce Schneier wrote: > Security Notes from All Over: Israeli > Airport Security Questioning > > >http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/12/security_notes.html > >In both "Secrets and Lies" and "Beyond Fear," I discuss a key >difference between attackers and defenders: the ability to concentrate >resources. The defender must defend against all possible attacks, >while the attacker can concentrate his forces on one particular avenue >of attack. This precept is fundamental to a lot of security, and can >be seen very clearly in counterterrorism. A country is in the position >of the interior; it must defend itself against all possible terrorist >attacks: airplane terrorism, chemical bombs, threats at the ports, >threats through the mails, lone lunatics with automatic weapons, >assassinations, etc, etc, etc. The terrorist just needs to find one >weak spot in the defenses, and exploit that. This concentration versus >diffusion of resources is one reason why the defender's job is so much >harder than the attackers. > >This same principle guides security questioning at the Ben Gurion >Airport in Israel. In this example, the attacker is the security >screener and the defender is the terrorist. (It's important to >remember that "attacker" and "defender" are not moral labels, but >tactical ones. Sometimes the defenders are the good guys and the >attackers are the bad guys. In this case, the bad guy is trying to >defend his cover story against the good guy who is attacking it.) > >Security is impressively tight at the airport, and includes a >potentially lengthy interview by a trained security screener. The >screener asks each passenger questions, trying to determine if he's a >security risk. But instead of asking different questions -- where do >you live, what do you do for a living, where were you born -- the >screener asks questions that follow a storyline: "Where are you >going? Who do you know there? How did you meet him? What were you >doing there?" And so on. > >See the ability to concentrate resources? The defender -- the >terrorist trying to sneak aboard the airplane -- needs a cover story >sufficiently broad to be able to respond to any line of >questioning. So he might memorize the answers to several hundred >questions. The attacker -- the security screener -- could ask >questions scattershot, but instead concentrates his questioning along >one particular line. The theory is that eventually the defender will >reach the end of his memorized story, and that the attacker will then >notice the subtle changes in the defender as he starts to make up answers. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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